The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Saint Pancratius was born in Phrygia, and after the death of his parents abode with his grandfather in an ancient house outside Rome. The Diocletian persecution raging at that time, Pope Cornelius with many of the Faithful lay concealed in a catacomb, and converted to the Faith first the youth, and afterwards his grandfather. Pancratius, then fourteen years of age, was dragged before Diocletian, who required him to sacrifice to the gods. The youth scorned that command, denouncing the pagan gods. He died with great gladness outside the city wall, and Concavilla, the wife of a Roman senator, interred his body honourably nigh to the Aurelian Gate, which, having been later dedicated to the Saint, is still called the Gate of Saint Pancratius.

The child Pancratius, blithesome as a bird,
Glorious of countenance and of heart undaunted
Abode in Phrygia. He had never heard
His ancient race by friend or minstrel vaunted:
How 'scaped he flattery?—thus: though great at Rome,
His sire had lived since youth remote from home.

That sire, Cledonius, had no heart for things
Whereof the dull and brainless make their boast,
Huge halls with tapestries hung, the gift of kings,
The unceasing revel and the menial host:
‘Here,’ said he, ‘all is base: I seek some clime
By genius graced, or hallowed by old time.’

He sailed to Athens; beauteous as a dream
Her fortress-steep and temples met his eye,
Ilyssus, and Colonos, Academe:
Eastward he passed; great Sunium's sea-cliff nigh,
He hailed that fane world-famous; from its steep
Revered its reflex in the violet deep.

In turn he visited the Cyclades;
At Delos slumbered 'neath the laurel shade;
Coasted the Asian shores; where'er the breeze
At random wafted him his dwelling made,
Headed the natives both in sports and jars;
Now judged the prize; now led them in their wars.

His was a soaring yet a careless nature,
Winged with high impulse, scant in self-control:
Nature he loved in every form and feature,
And Art, when Art expressed or strength or soul;
Loved battles most, and still, whate'er betide,
Sustained the juster, spurned the ignobler side.

One morn, sole wandering in a Phrygian wood,
He met the loveliest lady of that land
With maidens girt. At once her grace he sued
And from the King, her father, won her hand,
Quelling his foes. Within that realm in joy
They dwelt; and there she bore her lord a boy.

The years went by, and each endeared yet more
The growing youth to those who knew him well;
He joyed to tame the horse, to chase the boar;
Foremost he raced o'er Taurus, crag and fell,
Farthest his arrow launched, spake truth, and clave
Swiftliest, where Iris seaward swept, the wave.

One morn his father took him by the hand:
‘My son,’ he said, ‘should ill befall thy sire,
Weep not o'er-long, but reverence his command:
Thy mother guard; with her to Rome retire:
There dwells thy grandsire, now grown old and grey;
I owe to him a debt which thou must pay.

‘I left him though I loved: not anywhere
Found I that prize I sought o'er all the earth:
What if I lost it, leaving Rome? When there
Seek it thou too! In fanes—by home or hearth—
It dwells no more. Perhaps deep underground
With Rome's old Sibyl it may yet be found!

‘Rome is thy place of duty: work her good!
Toil for her future, mindful of her past:
I left her, seeking Truth. O son, I would
Some God would make it man's; for Truth will last.
I sought her for her freedom, brightness, beauty:
Perchance they find her best who seek but in duty.

‘I sought her long: not less myself I sought—
Well, well! It needs more leisure to repent
Than war-fields grant. Meantime, as parents ought,
I tag with counsel my last testament:
Fear none: the true man help: the false man fight;
And keep the old house, not proud, yet weather-tight.’

A trumpet-blast rang out: upon his horse
The brave man vaulted: from a trivial fray
Ere two hours passed they bore him back a corse:
The wife, the mother, met them on their way:
She raised her hand: they laid him down: wide-eyed
She gazed; upon his breast she sank, and died.

A month went by; three miles from Rome, and more,
A stately mansion shrouded in a wood
Caught on its roofs the sunset. At its door
Beauteous but weather-worn a stripling stood:
His form showed fourteen years at most: his mien
The bravest was, yet gentlest, ever seen.

A crowd of slaves in raiment rich but old
Led him through galleries long and many a room
Spacious yet dim with walls of rusty gold
To where his grandsire sat in twofold gloom,
Within, of velvet hangings stifling sound,
Of ilex woods without, and miles around.

The boy in reverence sank upon his knees
Craving a blessing. Soon was told his tale:
The old man listened mute; by slow degrees
He brightened like some hillside wan with hail
When sudden sunbeams flash from wintry skies:
And fires of days long dead were in his eyes.

‘'Tis well! A missive from my son late sent
Announced your coming. You are welcome, boy!
I had my wrongs, but now in part repent:
Your face is like your sire's; that gives me joy:
He might have lived the chiefest man in Rome:
Here you shall fill his place and find your home.

‘I was too silent once in grief; in wrath
Too loud. Your Father, boy, and I had words:
I held my own: the young man chose his path:
He passed o'er seas and lands like passage birds:
I mused in this old chair nor told my pain;
Yon terrace paced: the footprints still remain.’

Next morn the old man called from far and near
The slaves that served his house or delved his lands
And bade them in that youthful guest revere
Their future master. They with lifted hands
Shouted applause; then bowed their necks, and sware
True service to their lord and to his heir.

Day after day his grandsire gladdened more
Gazing upon that boy: with honest pride
He clothed him in the garb young nobles wore
When he himself was young, and bade him ride
His stubborn'st steed. ‘Who rules his horse,’ he said,
‘Shall find the rule of man an art inbred.’

He gave him best instructors, Romans each:
‘Read Varro, boy, read Ennius: these were ours;
Those gaudy scrolls from Hellas filched but teach
That fancy-lore which saps the manlier powers:
Our younger nobles scarcely know to speak:
They mar Rome's tongue with babblings from the Greek.’

That grandsire to the boy was teacher best,
For still his speech was not from books, but life,
Life of old days in liveliest pictures dressed,
Huge dangers, rapturous victories, ceaseless strife:
At times his speech dealt warning, seemed to chide
Some latent weakness in the boy descried.

‘A man must choose his friends; not less his foes;
Welcome rough truths; abhor a flatterer's praise:
He must not sail with every wind that blows,
Nor, vowed to virtue, walk in fortune's ways;
Nor seek contrarient Good. The knave that sues
God's lesser gifts His greater doth refuse.’

Oft of old days he spake: ‘The Gracchi first
Let loose dissension's plague; that plague to bind
The Empire rose: it laid a hand accursed
On high and low, the keen-eyed and the blind.
There History ends: Ixion's wheel rolls round—
So ours.’ Once more he spake with sigh profound!

‘That plague came earlier! Then when Carthage died
Her Conqueror, corse on corse, above her fell;
Scipio was prophet: loud and oft he cried,
“Your rival slain, your vices will rebel;
First pride; then civil strife; then sloth and greed:
Compared with such worst foe were friend at need.”

‘It proved so! Till that hour, survived that awe
True patriots feel, which, like the thought of death,
Confirms laws civil by religious law:
Carthage consumed, Rome breathed the emasculate breath
Of Eastern climes; Capuan she lived since then:
Cornelia was the last of Roman men.

‘The Gracchi too were men, scorned all things base,
Pitied the poor, the slave: they erred through zeal:
In time they might have won the conscript race:
They to the popular passions made appeal:
They ranged 'gainst Rome the nobles’ wrath and pride:
The last they might have lured to virtue's side.

‘The nobles with Pompeius fell; with them
Fell that republic theirs through virtuous might:
The Gods placed next the imperial diadem
On Cæsar's forehead. I deny their right!

My sentence here is Cato's —With the Gods,
Albeit religious, here I stand at odds.’

Pancratius fixed in silent trance of thought
Full on his grandsire's face those lustrous eyes
Which beamed as if they ne'er had gazed on aught
Less splendid than the splendour of clear skies
When throned within them sits the noontide day:
He spake: ‘The Gods—my grandsire, what are they?’

His grandsire then: ‘The old teaching saith that Jove
Exists, and they, the rest. Our Cynics new
Flout that old faith, yet never can disprove:
Our Gods live ill; not less they may be true:
Till speaks that greater God, the All-Wise, All-Blest,
Let man await His voice, and be at rest.’

The old man never from his wood emerged;
In his great Roman home refused to dwell;
Yet oft of Rome he spake, and ever urged
The boy he loved to learn her annals well.
‘All History there,’ he said, ‘is summed; yet all
Her greatness past but aggravates her fall.

‘Son, walk in Rome, but wisely choose thy way;
Seek first great Vesta's fane by Numa built:
Unnoted pass those trophies of the day,
Pillar or arch, that fawn on prosperous guilt:
The Augustan and the Adrian Tombs to thee
Be what crowned upstarts, when they die, must be.

‘Hold thou no commerce with Mount Palatine;
Revere the Hill Saturnian's templed crest;
Still to Tarpeia's Rock thy brows incline,
Ambition's latest leap and earliest rest:
Seek last that hallowed spot where regal pride
A second Brutus met, and Cæsar died.

‘Turn from that huge Pantheon's godless boast
Where all Gods met became, not one, but none;
That Coliseum by a captive host
Ill-raised, the ill-omened vaunt of deeds ill-done.
Trample such memories! To thy bosom fold—
In them high mysteries lurk—our records old.

‘Romulus, that Sword of Mars, as warrior reigned;
Numa as priest. He served the Unnamed, the Unknown:
If lesser Powers be honoured, he ordained
They should have image none in hue or stone.
He built the “Fecials' House:” until they swore
“This Cause is just,” Rome dared not march to war.

‘Like Indian sage he lived: his thoughts were tuned—
His laws—to mystic strains beyond the skies;
One law was this: “Vintage of vine unpruned
Use not, 'twere sacrilege, in sacrifice:”
That meant, Religion shorn of Self-restraint
Insults the God; not worship, but a feint.

‘The great Republic honoured still the Kings:
Long stood their statues on the Capitol:
From Kings our noblest Houses came: great things
Thus live though dead, while centuries onward roll.
Boy! he who for the present spurns the past
Shall reap no future while the world doth last.

‘True men were honoured then, or poor or rich:
Peace made, the conqueror tilled anew his farm:
Order was friend to Freedom: each in each
They lived; and each its rival kept from harm:
Sages gave counsel: heroes held command:—
What now? The hard heart, and the silken hand!

‘Strong thinkers ruled—not chosen for bribe or boast;
Far-seeing, serious men of silent power;
Those who the Senate's pride denounced the most
Invoked that Senate still in danger's hour;
They knew the old tree anchors on deepest root;
Swings safest in the gale; bears amplest fruit.

‘Rome had her poets, too: their work is done:
Her earlier history lives alone in verse:
The perils gladly braved, the triumphs won,
The songs alone were worthy to rehearse:
Not much the songs loved us; but them we prized:
In them the people's voice grew harmonized.

‘Those songs were sung the banquet-hall to charm:
Coriolanus lived once more in them;
In them Virginius raised that conquering arm;
In them King Tarquin's starry diadem
Fell to the earth; Camillus spurned the Gaul;
Attilius passed to death at duty's call.

‘To these we owe our best. Livius from these
Flung fire upon his many-coloured page:
From them, the Aphroditè of new seas,
Rome's Latïan Muse had risen some later age:
Our Civil Wars trampled that hope in blood:
The Empire came, and choked the old blood in mud.

‘Then Maro piped, and Flaccus: Rome turned Greek:
Barbaric now she turns, gloom lost in gloom:
My buried Rome if any care to seek,
Boy! let him seek it in the Scipios' Tomb!
Enough! My song is sung, and said my say:—
Numa his best Muse named his “Tacita.”’

He rose: he gazed on that long cloud which barred,
Its crest alone still red, that dusking west:
At last he turned; with breath all thick and hard
He spake, his white head drooping t'ward his breast,
‘'Twas not her pangs, her shames, that tried me most;
I thought of all Rome might have been—and lost.’

That night beside a cabinet he stood
Musing; unlocked it next with carefulness;
Last, from a perfumed box of citron-wood
Drew slowly forth a lithe and golden tress;
Slowly he placed it in his grandson's hold:
Your father's hair—cut off at three years old.’

Scipio of Nasica.

Causa victrix Diis placuit: Causa victa Catoni.

The Capitoline Hill.

PART II.

Pancratius' grandsire left him ever free:
‘If good the heart,’ the man was wont to say,
‘Feed it with lore, but leave it liberty;
The good, wise heart will learn to choose its way:
Virtue means courage: man must dare and do:
Who does the Right shall find at last the True.’

The boy, though gay, was studious; swift to learn,
To him the acquest of knowledge was delight,
For his the sacred instinct to discern
How high true Knowledge wings the Spirit's flight.
The youth of Rome no comrades were for him:
Triflers he deemed them, fooled by jest and whim.

Often on that great plain which circles Rome
He spurred his steed Numidian; oftener far
In that huge wood which girt his lonely home
Sat solitary, while the morning star
Levelled along some dewy lawn its beam,
Or flashed remote on Tiber's tremulous stream.

Pacing its glades at times, he seemed to hear
Music till then unknown, a mystic strain
That sank or swelled alternate on his ear
Like long, smooth billows of some windless main.
‘Is this a dream?’ he mused; ‘if not, this wood
Houses some Spirit kind to man and good.’

One day he sat there, sad. The year before
That self-same day his parents both had died.
‘Where are they now? Upon what distant shore
Walk they this hour?’ For them, not self, he sighed.
‘They have not changed to clay; they live: they must:
But where, and how, I know not. Let me trust!

‘What loyal love maintained they each for each!
With what bright courage met they peril's hour!
How just their acts, how kind and true their speech!
They never drave the outcast from their bower:
Some great belief they must have held! In whom?
Believe I will! My altar is their tomb.’

Wearied with grief, the orphan sank asleep,
And, sleeping, dreamed. In dream once more he heard
That mystic music sweeter and more deep
Than e'er before; and now and then a word
Reached him, he deemed from shadowy realms beneath:
At times that word was ‘Life;’ at times 'twas ‘Death.’

Then, o'er the sheddings which the west wind's fan
Had strewn beneath the pine-woods, he was 'ware
That steps anear him drew; and lo! a man
Beside him stood. The sunset touched his hair
Snow-white, down-streaming from that reverend head,
And on his staff cross-crowned a splendour shed.

The dream dissolved: upright he sat, awake:
The Apostolic Sire of Christian Rome
Beside him stood—Cornelius: thus he spake:
‘Fear naught! I come to lead a wanderer home:
Thou mourn'st thine earthly parents. They are nigh
More than in life, though throned in yonder sky.

‘God's angel brought to each in life's last hour
That Truth they sought, both for their sake and thine:
They left thee in the flesh: since then in power
With love once human only, now divine,
Have tracked thy wandering steps: this day, O boy,
Through me they send thee tidings of great joy.

‘That God who made the worlds at last hath spoken:
The shadows melt: the dawn of Truth begins;
That Saviour God the captive's chain hath broken;
Reigns o'er the free: our tyrants were our Sins:

He reigns Who rose, that God for man Who died,
Reigns from the Cross, and rules—the Crucified.’

He told him all. As when within the East
The ascended sun is glassed in seas below
So that high Truth with light that still increased
Lit in the listener's mind a kindred glow
Because that mind was loving, calm, and pure
With courage to believe and to endure.

In blank astonishment he stood at first,
By Truth's strong beam though raptured yet halfdazed:
As when upon the eyes of angels burst
Creation new created, so he gazed:
He questioned; but his questions all were wise:
Therefore that Truth he sought became his prize.

Later he mused; then spake: ‘Whilst yet a child
Something I heard—my memory is not clear—
Of Christ, and her, His mother undefiled:
Alas! it sank no deeper than mine ear.
An old nurse whispered me that tale. Ere long
She died, some said, for God. Her heart was strong.’

An hour gone by, Pancratius made demand,
‘That heavenly music, came it from above?’
Cornelius then: ‘The persecutor's brand
Rages against us: not from fear but love,
Love of Christ's poor—the weak, the babe—we hide:
If found we die: to seek our death were pride.

‘Men scoff at us as dwellers 'mid the tombs:
Beneath your grandsire's woods, till late untrod,

Extends the largest of the Catacombs:
There dwells the Christian Church, and sings to God:
Our hymns betray us oft. Descending, thou
One day wilt hear them—When?’ He answered: ‘Now.’

That twain in silence passed to where the mouth
Of those dread caverns yawned; they stooped beneath;
Instant upon them fell that heat and drouth
Which Nubian sands o'er wayworn pilgrims breathe:
Red torches glared the winding ways among;
To roofs low-arched the lingering anthems clung.

Their latest echo dies: the Lector reads,
Then speaks: plain, brief, and strong is his discourse:
‘Brothers! each day ye know some martyr bleeds;
What then? Does any fear that fleshly force
Can slay the soul? God lives that soul within,
And God is Life. Death dwelleth but with sin.’

That eve Pancratius mused: ‘'Mid yonder vaults
God's servants live in love, and peaceful cheer:
Who rules in Rome? There Vice her crown exalts
Shameless yet sad; beside her, Jest and Fear.
That Lector told us of a shepherd boy,
The sling, the stone.’ That night was full of joy.

Then with a solace never his before
His thoughts reverted to his parents dead;
‘That Truth,’ he said, ‘they sought, yet missed, of yore,
Is theirs this hour: its crown is on their head;

Its sword within their hand. That Christ whom we
Discern through mist they in God's glory see.

‘Thank Heaven, my grandsire lives!’ Straight to his ear
He brought his tale. Upon that Roman's brow
Hung thunder-cloud: the thing supremely dear
To him were these, Reverence and Rule; and now
A boy, a child that daily ate his bread,
Had heaped dishonour on his hoary head.

‘Renounce thy madness, boy, or hence this day!’
Pancratius answered, with that winning smile
Dear to the sad man's heart, ‘Not so: I stay!
There cometh one your anger to beguile:
I told him you were good: thus answered he,
“Good-will means Faith: the Truth shall set him free.”’

Thus as he spake the mitred Sire of Rome,
Without disguise, his pastoral staff in hand,
Entered: ‘I seek, great sir, your ancient home,
By you unbidden, at this youth's command:
If this molests you, you can have my head:
The law proscribes, the Emperor wills me dead.’

Silent the Roman noble sat: anon
A glance on that strange guest at random thrown
Wrought in him change: then first he looked on one
Of presence more majestic than his own.
‘Cornelius is your name; unless I err.
Yours is that ancient stock Cornelian, sir.

‘Within this mansion I abide recluse;
I with the Emperor slight acquaintance boast,
None with his court. Such things may have their use;
They pass us quickly. As becomes a host
All guests alike I honour, old or new;
I war on no man, but converse with few.

‘Perhaps you come with tidings: if from me
Aught you require, speak briefly, without art.’
Cornelius smiled, then answered placidly,
‘To each the self-same tidings I impart:
Beside your house a gold-mine lurks; with you
Remains to sink your shaft or miss your due.’

Courteous that Roman bowed, yet scarcely listened;
Ere long he gave attention: by degrees
The strong, imperious eye now flashed, now glistened;
Point after point he seemed in turn to seize.
He proffered question none; he spake no word,
In mind collected, but in spirit stirred.

Lo! as some statued form of art antique,
Solon or Plato, sits with brow hand-propt
And eyes the centre of the earth that seek,
So sat he, when that strain majestic stopt,
In silence long. He raised his eyes, and then
Spake thus alone: ‘In three days come again.’

Three days went by; in that dim room once more
Cornelius spake: inly Pancratius prayed;
The old man listened mute. His message o'er,
The Venerable Sign the Pontiff made
Above that low-bent forehead. With it grace
Fell from on high and lit that hoary face.

Then questioned thus that man severe and grave:
‘What was the birthplace of this Creed decried
Which in all lands attracts the meek and brave?’
To whom the Roman Pontiff thus replied:
‘Judah—not Greece! Fishers, not Seers, went forth;
They preached that Creed, and died to prove its worth.’

His host: ‘This Faith is then at least no dream—
A dream, albeit perchance of dreams the best
In youth I deemed it, and dismissed the theme:
Pity 'tis new! 'Tis Time doth Truth attest.’
The answer came: ‘This Faith is old as man:
“The Woman's Seed.” It ends as it began.

‘This is that Faith which over-soars the sage
Yet condescends to him, the peasant boy:
This is that Hope which brightest shines in age
All others quenched: this is that Love, that Joy,
Which all retrieves; to patriots worn that cries
“Thy great, true Country waits thee in yon skies.”’

The Roman next: ‘The Creeds of ages past
Lived long; yet most have died; the rest wax old:
Yours is the amplest: it will prove the last:
For he who, having clasped it, slips his hold
Shall find none other. Of the seas of Time
This is high-water mark, stamped on the cliffs sublime.

‘Not less that question, “Is it true?” recurs.
What Virtue is, by virtuous life is shown:
She lights the paths she walks on; no man errs
Who treads them. Would that Truth might thus be known!
Sir, I must ponder these things. Agèd men
Perforce are slow. In ten days come again.’

In ten days more that Christian priest returned:
The Roman noble met him at the door,
But altered. ‘You are welcome! I have yearned
To see your face and hear again your lore.
At times I grasp it tight: but I am old:
Close-clutched it slides like sand from out my hold.

‘Mark well yon Sabine and yon Alban ranges!
The north wind blows; clear shineth each ravine:
Thus clear stands out your Creed; the north wind changes;
The clouds rush in, and vapours shroud the scene:
Thus dims more late that Creed. My end draws nigh:
Honest it were Truth's Confessor to die.’

Cornelius answered, ‘Sir, not flesh and blood
But God's own Finger wrote one sacred word
Upon your heart when by you first I stood:
That word was “Christ.” Brave man! In this you erred,
Not seeking then and there that conquering light
Which shines, like sunrise, on the baptism rite.’

Hour after hour, and far into the morn,
Those two conversed of God. That saintly sage
Witnessed, nor argued. ‘Truth,’ he said, ‘is born
Alike in heart of childhood and of age,
A spirit-birth. Invoke that Spirit Divine
And all His lore immortal shall be thine.’

To all demands he made the same reply:
Within that old man's breast—by slow degrees
Stirred like Bethesda's waters tremulously—
God's Truths put on God's splendour. ‘Men like trees

Walking,’ in mist at first such seemed they; then
They trod the earth like angels, not like men.

Sudden that old man rose; he cried, ‘I see!
Thank God! The scales are fallen from mine eyes!
I see that Infant on His Mother's knee,
That Saviour on His Cross, man's Sacrifice.
It could not but be thus! From heaven to earth
That Cross fills all; all else is nothing worth!’

At sunrise he received baptismal grace;
And ever from that hour its radiance glowed
A better sunrise on his wrinkled face,
For all his heart with gladness overflowed,
And childhood's innocence returned; and all
His childhood loved seemed near him at his call.

Once more the aspirations of his youth
About him waved their pinions; by his side
Now better known than when her nuptial truth
To him she pledged, beside him walked his bride;
And to that love he bore his Land returned
That hope, long quenched, wherewith it once had burned.

Still as of old his country's past he praised:
‘Numa revered one God; no idols crowned;
Two altars—holy were they both—he raised;
One was for Terminus who guards the Bound;
One was for Faithfulness who keeps the Pledge:
These spurned, he taught, all rites are sacrilege.

‘A matron wronged dragged down the race of Kings;
A virgin wronged hurled forth those Ten from Rome:

Omen and auspice these of greater things;
Of Truth reserved to make with her its home.
Man needs that aid! The proof? Man lives to act;
And noblest deeds are born of Faith and Fact.’

Yet, though before him ever stood the vision
Of that high Truth which gives the human soul
Of visible things sole mastery and fruition,
More solid seemed he, and in self-control
More absolute, than of old; and from his eye
Looked lordlier forth its old sobriety.

In him showed nothing of enthusiasm,
Of thought erratic wistful for strange ways,
Nothing of phrase fantastic, passion's spasm,
Or self-applause masking in self-dispraise:
Some things to him once great seemed now but small:
In small things greatness dwelt, and God in all.

Three months gone by, he freed his slaves; above
That rock, the portal of that Catacomb,
He raised an altar ‘To the Eternal Love’
Inscribed: more low he built his humble tomb:
‘Not far,’ he said, ‘repose God's martyrs: I,
Albeit unworthy, near to them would lie.’

In one month more serene and glad he died;
An hour ere death painless the old man lay,
Those two that loved him watching at his side:
‘In Christ, yet not for Christ,’ they heard him say;
‘This is the sole of Faiths, for which to bleed
Were wholly sage. My son had loved this Creed.’

The tidings that a noble of the old race
Had spurned the old rites transpired not till that hour
Which laid him in his woodland burial-place;
'Twas Diocletian's day: the Imperial power
Had made decree to trample to the ground
God's Church. A worthy victim it had found.

For when about the dead the Romans thronged
Much wondering at the unwonted obsequies
Nor pleased to see their old traditions wronged,
Pancratius answered, ‘Christian rites are these;’
Then made proclaim to all men far and nigh,
‘My grandsire died a Christian: such am I.’

Two pagan priests to Diocletian sped:—
‘Yon man who died an atheist left an heir;
Asian he is, a Christian born and bred:
Shall that new Faith with Jove and Cæsar share?
Usurp a Roman noble's place and pride?’
‘Bring here that youth,’ the Emperor replied.

That Emperor looked upon the Gods as those
Who shared his reign. In majesty and mirth
They sat enskied above the Olympian snows:
The Goddess Rome, their last-born, ruled the earth;
The Roman Emperor was her husband. He
Partook perforce in their divinity.

That Emperor was not cruel; from the height
Of that imagined greatness gazing down
To rule he deemed his duty as his right;
The world his kingdom was, and Rome its crown:
Who spurned that crown he deemed as sense-bereaven,
Rebel 'gainst earth, and blasphemous 'gainst heaven.

Next day at noon within his Judgment Court
He sat, by all his pomp of majesty
Compassed and guarded; lion-like his port;
Then whispered man to man: ‘That terrible eye
Without yon Lictors' axes or their rods,
Will drive the renegade to his country's Gods.’

Pancratius entered—entered with a smile;
Bowed to the Emperor; next to those around
First East, then West. The Emperor gazed awhile
On that bright countenance; knew its import; frowned:
‘A malefactor known! Yet there you stand!
Young boy, be wise in time. Hold forth your hand!

‘Yon censer mark! It comes from Jove's chief fane;
See next yon vase cinctured with flower-attire:
Lift from that vase its smallest incense-grain;
Commit it softly to yon censer's fire:
Your father, boy, was well with me; and I
Would rather serve his son than bid him die.’

Pancratius mused a moment, then began:
‘Emperor, 'tis true I am a boy; no more:
But One within me changes boy to man,
Christ, God and Man, that Lord the just adore.
A pictured lion hangs above thy head:
Say, can a picture touch man's heart with dread?

‘Thou, too, great Emperor, are but pictured life:
He only lives who quickens life in all:
Men are but shadows: in a futile strife
They chase each other on a sun-bright wall.
Shadows are they the hosts that round thee throng;
Shadows their swords that vindicate this wrong.

‘What Gods are those thou bidst me serve and praise?
Adulterers, murderers, Gods of fraud and theft.
If slave of thine walked faithful to their ways
What were his sentence? Eyes of light bereft;
The scourge, the rope! Our God is Good. His Name
Paints on His servant's face no flush of shame.’

The Emperor shook: as one demon-possessed
He glared upon that youth; his wan cheek burned:
With wonder dumb panted his struggling breast:
Silent to that Prætorian Guard he turned;
He pointed to Pancratius. ‘Let him die!’
Pancratius stood, and pointed to the sky.

That night a corse beside the Aurelian Way
Lay as in sleep. Hard by, two maidens fair
Now knelt and lifted high their hands to pray,
Now bent and kissed his cheek and smoothed his hair:
Two daughters of a Roman matron these:
A grove not far shook, moonlit, in the breeze.

O fair young love—for when could love show fairer?
O maids, should earthly love e'er house with you,
With love thus heavenly may that love be sharer;
Like this be cleansing, hallowing, self-less, true!
Thou too, O boy, love's guerdon hast not missed
Though young, by lips so pure so kindly kissed.

A youth he lay of fourteen years in seeming;
A lily by the tempest bent, not broken:
Round the lashed lids a smile divine was gleaming;
And if that mouth, so placid, could have spoken

Plainly its speech had been: ‘Thank Heaven, 'tis past!
The secret of the skies is mine at last.’

Softly those maidens with their mother bore
Pancratius to that grove, and made his grave:
O'er his light limbs the radiant scarfs they wore
Softly they spread. Such wreaths as grace the brave
On him they strewed next morn, and buds of balm;
And by that grave planted the martyr's palm.

Near it the Roman Walls ascend, and Gate
Aurelian called of old, Pancratian now,
Honouring that youth who smiling met his fate
So soon, so gladly kept his baptism vow.
King Numa's ‘Faithfulness’ in him was found;
Therefore old ‘Terminus’ guards still that bound.

Some say that when that Gate to him was given
A mystery therein was signified:
Earth hath her ‘Holy City;’ but in heaven
A holier waits us: one that aye shall bide:
Twelve gates it hath: each boasts high trust and fief:
The Gate of Martyrdom of these is chief.

Yea, and the Martyr is himself a gate,
Since through the fiery ether of his prayer
Which Vision blest kindles and doth dilate
Who strives for heaven finds help to enter there.
O Martyr young, by Death made glad and free,
In Death's dread hour pray well for mine and me!

University of Virginia Library

THE LEGEND OF SAINT PANCRATIUS.

(DIED A.D. 287.)

I. PART I.

ARGUMENT.

PART II.